By S.A. McCarthy

The brutal murder of conservative activist and Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk on September 10 has driven home a stark reality for many conservatives: “Maybe there is no unity, maybe there is no national reconciliation, maybe they really do want me dead.” Kirk was not a political extremist, he was not an autocrat, he was not a fascist, he was not a dictator — in fact, he didn’t hold any office or have access to any “hard power.” Kirk spent his days giving a microphone and a platform to his political opponents, freely and openly debating all stripes of liberals, progressives, leftists, and Marxists. His political opponents shot him through the throat.

This is not an anomaly. According to Rasmussen Reports, more than half (54%) of voters who identify as liberal agreed that Kirk “was speaking hateful words” and his assassination was therefore “understandable.” Approximately 40% of Democratic voters also agreed. An Economist/YouGov survey also quizzed Americans on political violence, reporting that 20% of voters who identify as liberal believe that political violence can be “justified,” compared to only 7% of self-described moderates and conservatives. Following the assassination attempts against President Donald Trump last year, a poll conducted by RMG Research founder and president Scott Rasmussen found that nearly a fifth (17%) of Americans said that the world would be “better off if Donald Trump had been killed…” Over a quarter (28%) of those who wished death upon the now-president were registered Democrats, and another 27% identified as voters who “lean Dem.”

The ghoulish, psychopathic delight with which leftists responded to news of Kirk’s slaughter only serves to fortify the statistics. Reactions online ranged from blaming Kirk’s “hateful” rhetoric and “bigotry” for inspiring an assassin to calling for the assassination of other conservative figures to wishing that Kirk’s widow, Erika, and two children would also be killed. I myself took a look at BlueSky, the left-wing alternative to X, and found some pretty horrific commentary. Here are just a few examples:

“Charlie Kirk was a Nazi. Now he is a dead Nazi.”

“charlie kirk was a fascist and we’re better off without him.”

Referring to the frequent Kirk headlines, “Who would have thought that he’d be MORE annoying after he died?”

“charlie kirk was a racist transphobic neonazi creep.”

“In Hell he now burns.”

“if they make a charlie kirk day we burning his ass in effigy.”

Referring to the Sinclair Broadcasting Group not airing a Kirk memorial special, “They Kirked the Charlie Kirk special…”

“Jimmy Kimmel is back and Charlie Kirk is still dead.”

One BlueSky user suggested that the president might be assassinated soon: “It’s going to happen someday and people are going to celebrate and anybody who wants to scold that celebration had best be prepared to fight.” Another replied, “If they think we’ve been mean about Charlie Kirk they are going to be really shocked that day.”

Those are just a few examples, and fairly tame ones at that. Hundreds of thousands of leftists have made public social media posts and various Instagram or TikTok videos, posted under the names on their government-issued-IDs, reveling in and celebrating the murder of a 31-year-old husband and father who devoted the last 13 years of his life to handing his political opponents a microphone and asking, “Want to talk?” This widespread reaction, coupled with the trend of leftists committing heinous acts of political violence, has caused many conservatives to reflect, “Maybe they really do want me dead.” They do.

The right-wing comedian-cum-agent-provocateur-turned-political-philosopher Sam Hyde summarized the situation saying, “When we win, do not forget that these people want you broke, dead, your kids raped and brainwashed, and they think it’s funny.” It’s true. They do. Following Kirk’s murder, leftists expressed gratitude that his three-year-old daughter would grow up without her fascist, because Kirk might not let his daughter commit an abortion on the off-chance that she were raped at the age of 10. College girls did TikTok dances, posing with their heads at unnatural angles in mockery of Kirk.

If they want Kirk’s daughter to grow up fatherless, they want your children to grow up fatherless, too. If they laugh when Kirk is shot in the throat, they will laugh when you are gunned down walking to church. If they believe that Kirk was a “Nazi,” then they think the same of you. If they believe that murdering Kirk is “understandable,” they will have more sympathy for your murderer than your widow. If they believe that political violence is “justified,” then they will use it.

The inescapable truth is that leftists do not see you as human. You may have the face of a man and the arms and legs and beating heart of a man, you may walk and talk like a man, but you have made yourself sub-human in their eyes. The reason for this is a failure or refusal to adhere to reality, and the tell-tale signs are the labels leftists use.

Reality is ordained and sustained by God and rooted in Him. Leftism, as a branch of naturalism, seeks to usurp the throne of God and subjugate reality not to His will but to one’s own will. It is the sin of Satan, the sin of Adam and Eve, and the root of nearly all sin ever since, both great and small, it is a rejection of the imitation of Christ and a direct inversion of His example. Where Christ poured out His own blood, the leftist sheds the blood of others. Where Christ prayed, “Not as I will, but as You will,” the leftist declares, “As I will, not as You will.” The animating spirit of leftism is a desire to reorder reality, to subjugate reality beneath the leftist’s feet, and to become God.

This naturalist animating spirit can be seen in leftism’s social and political aims: abortion reorders the procreative reality of sex by killing the child; homosexuality also reorders the procreative reality of sex by removing the possibility of procreation; transgenderism reorders the reality of biology through the use of dangerous drugs and horrifying mutilative surgeries. Of course, none of these things actually alters reality: a mother who kills her unborn child is still a mother, but she is now one who has killed her own child; a marriage is still a union between one man and one woman, no matter how many lawsuits a homosexual-identifying individual files; and a biological man is still a man even though he slices off his own sex organs and replaces them with reshaped forearm flesh. It is all to no avail.

The one realm in which the leftist can play god is that of words and labels. The baby to be aborted is not really a baby but a “clump of cells.” The two men who just purchased a little boy through surrogacy are a “loving couple.” The man who cut off his penis is actually a “woman.” It is in this world of wordplay that you are stripped of your humanity. You are no longer a fellow human, no longer a neighbor or a family member or a classmate or a coworker or even just a stranger. You are a bigot, a racist, an authoritarian, a fascist, a Nazi. The thing about bigots, racists, authoritarians, fascists, and Nazis is that they deserve to die; they’re the bad guys. “Maybe they really do want me dead.” They do, and every time they call you a bigot, a racist, an authoritarian, a fascist, or a Nazi, they’re telling you as much, they’re painting a target on your forehead and saying, “Ready, aim…”

The leftist terrorism is far from over. Shooting the president in the side of the head after a decade of smearing him as Hitler wasn’t the end. Shooting a church full of Catholic schoolchildren praying wasn’t the end. Shooting Kirk in the throat wasn’t the end. Shooting a television station for canceling a leftist propagandist wasn’t the end. Just today, another terrorist opened fire on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Texas, with anti-ICE slogans written on his bullets. Whatever the shooter’s intention, he killed one of the detained immigrants before taking his own life. That won’t be the end, either. Like it or not, the U.S. is rapidly entering an era of violence. Unsatisfied with their wordplay and their labels, leftists have decided to remake reality in their own image through violence. You are in the way, because you won’t play along.

However, it is crucial not to allow the unfolding rash of leftist terrorism to dishearten and dissuade you, to cow you into apathetic silence and inaction. Rather, it ought to serve as a call to action, a sort of grim inspiration. If reality is under assault, then it must be defended all the more heartily. The early church father Tertullian observed in the late second and early third centuries, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Already, the seed of Kirk’s spilled blood is beginning to take root and sprout.

The high-profile memorial event hosted in Kirk’s honor saw a bold proclamation of the gospel, preached by pastors, professors, pundits, and senior government officials. Vice President J.D. Vance shared, “I have talked more about Jesus Christ in the past two weeks than I have my entire time in public life.” Kirk’s Christian witness and his willingness to give his life for his faith and his nation have seemingly inspired a revival, with thousands opening their Bibles or returning to church for the first time in years and hundreds bravely proclaiming the truth of the gospel in the face of a hostile world.

The thing about martyrdom is that it inspires, it does not discourage. In the 1920s, Mexico’s atheistic and secularist government began violently oppressing Catholics in the country, sparking a conflict with a group of Catholic rebels known as the Cristeros. The Catholic priest Miguel Pro had gained some notoriety for repeatedly and cleverly evading capture by the government, but was eventually arrested in a series of raids following an assassination attempt against former Mexican President Álvaro Obregón, with which Pro had nothing to do. The Jesuit priest faced the firing squad with his arms outstretched, like those of Christ crucified, and cried out, “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”) His execution was photographed and, by order of the government, printed on the front page of every newspaper in the country, in an effort to crush the spirits of the Cristeros and frighten Mexican Catholics into submission. The highly-publicized execution had the opposite effect: over 60,000 lined the streets for Pro’s funeral, standing in full view of President Plutarco Elías Calles, and the Cristeros redoubled their fighting, waging war against the government for another three years.

The next chapter of America’s history may be a dark one, and we may pray that precious little blood is spilled. But one thing seems clear: the murder and, in a sense, martyrdom of Charlie Kirk has awakened many conservatives and American Christians out of a stupor. A new fire has been kindled in the heart of the nation: not a blaze of hatred and vengeance, although there is certainly and rightly a thirst for justice, but a bonfire of devotion. Long has that light, often no brighter than a flickering votive candle gently smoldering in the corner of an empty church, been the hope of this nation, but it has now been fed, not with oil and wood, but with blood and passion. Dark though the next year or several years may be, it will be lit by the fire of faith which Kirk, with his dying breath, set ablaze in our hearts.

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.